Quote:
Originally Posted by RickyMaveety
That is because, although you can write to the registry, the system will not recognize changes to the registry .... until you reboot.
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That's not entirely correct. The registry is implemented as a shared memory-mapped file in Windows, and any changes are instantly visible "globally".
The issue is that most processes only read their configuration data from the registry when they start up, so even though the data may have changed subsequently, those changes will not actually be read until the next time the process starts - ie at the next reboot.
All processes in the system are sent a notification that registry data has changed, and are recommended to re-read their configuration data on receipt of such a notification. Processes which do this can smoothly handle registry changes. Many processes, however, ignore such notifications, and hence will only read changed registry data on reboot.